Beyond The Gopurams: A Woman's Spiritual Journey Through South India

Cover

BEYOND THE

GOPURAMS

Priti Aisola

BEYOND THE

GOPURAMS

A Woman’s

Spiritual Journey

Through

South India

© Priti Aisola, 2014

First published 2014

Cover painting: Shuchi Chawla

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise—without the prior permission of the author and the publisher.

ISBN 978-81-8328-368-7

Published by

Wisdom Tree

4779/23, Ansari Road

Darya Ganj, New Delhi-110 002

Ph.: 23247966/67/78

wisdomtreebooks@gmail.com

Printed in India

I dedicate this book to my parents,

my husband Ravi,

and our friend Chandrasekar,

an invaluable guide and companion

on many journeys.

Contents

Acknowledgements ix

I Am Home 1

Monkey Business and Mahabalipuram 9

Chidambaram 13

Vaitheeswaran Koil 29

Our Guide at Darasuram 43

Sweta Vinayakar and Tiruvaiyaru 52

Mysore and Nanjangud 63

Talakaveri 75

Bhagamandala and Triveni Sangam 85

Madikeri: Mother Kaveri and Méditerranée 95

Murudeshwar 102

Kollur 110

Sringeri 121

Horanadu 131

Marudamalai 135

Isha Centre and the Dhyanalingam 141

Ooty’s Thread Flower Garden 152

Mudumalai 155

My First Experience of Art in Hyderabad 166

Ganesha Doing Linga Abhishekam 171

Paris: A Very Different Journey 175

Guimet: A Truncated Visit 182

Museum of Modern Art on Avenue du Président Wilson 187

Kancheepuram 194

Simhachalam 210

Pithapuram 220

Draksharama 229

Sri Kurmam 235

Salihundam 243

My Nameless Tree 248

A Healer 253

Lamps 266

Connections in Unlikely Places 271

Chikamagalur 276

Thiruvalangadu 280

Images of Death 288

A Postscript 297

Glossary 301

Acknowledgements

My heartfelt thanks to the following people: Shyamala Sanketti for telling me about Wisdom Tree and persuading me to write to them; Chandrasekar Ramaswami for being a patient guide on our travels; Vidya and Venkat for their generous hospitality which facilitated our journeys from Chennai to the many temple towns in Tamil Nadu and made them a beautiful reality; my friend Mini Agarwal Dang for her sweet encouragement; Alex and Chitra for offering their home in Paris which made our trip to France a deeply cherished visit; Aparna, Sreedhar and their lovely twins for being there for us in Paris and India; Prof Subbarayudu for help with nagging grammar concerns; my parents, and family on both sides, for their love and unconditional support; my husband Ravi and my son Ananda for their heartwarming interest in my writing while pretending otherwise; my sister Shuchi Chawla for her painting (a labour of love), which is now the front cover image of this book; my publisher Shobit Arya for taking a keen personal interest in the shaping of this book; Papri Sri Raman for being a considerate and meticulous editor.

And to all the friends who haven’t been named, all the guardian angels and invisible gracious guides and kindly spirits who can’t be named, I offer my deepest gratitude.

I’ll Renovate My Heart

Each day strips a beam from the roof

Each night loosens a brick, shifts a stone

Some mortar falls in the twilight hours

Do not collapse my house, my home

Outside the grass is seared brown, no bed

And there are no stars to gaze at

Grey-gripped the sky grimaces

Go where?

Home is where the heart is

I Am Home

Home is where the heart is

It’s where we started

Where we belong

—McFly (British Pop Rock Band)

ome is where the heart is. Now, after a stay of close to six years in Hyderabad, the concrete form and delicate essence of this truism come to me with chiselled clarity. On the verge of our posting to Vancouver, I look back at our stay here with mixed feelings of pain, pleasure and gratitude—pain because of illness in the family and the loss of some dear ones and pleasure because of the exceptional opportunity it offered to reconnect with family and friends and forge new bonds with several others.

My husband, Ravi, is in the Indian Foreign Service. Apart from our visits to India during home leave, we had been away for nearly ten years. After a three-and-a-half-year stay in Paris, in August 2006 we came to Hyderabad, our home town. A home posting is rather unusual but we were lucky. The Ministry of External Affairs had opened a Branch Secretariat and a post to head it was vacant. Ravi requested for the post. My father-in-law

was ill with a serious lung disease at that time. A Hyderabad posting would give us a chance to be with him and my parents who are settled here. Sadly, my father-in-law passed away a few weeks before we got here. This grievous loss cast a shadow on our homecoming.

I returned home with carefully garnered memories for company in backward-glancing moments. And the manuscript of a novel to keep me focussed in floundering moments. It was partly set in Paris, the attractive city that I had ventured to get to know a little—shyly at first and then with more ease and alacrity. Minutes before our arrival, as the aircraft began its descent into Hyderabad on 13 August, I am finally home, I told myself, yet I was apprehensive about the implications of this homecoming. I hoped it would be as simple as I tried to make it sound.

The monsoon was in full swing—very pleasant weather. It was certainly a great relief after Delhi’s heat and unbearable humidity. I had spent the previous week in Delhi in a daze, shutting out all unpleasant sights and sounds, counting the minutes till I would be in Hyderabad in my parents’ place in a green and agreeable colony. The only places where I felt at ease were my grandparents’ home and Saravana Bhavan, where we would go for practically all our meals. I just felt vaguely threatened by something indefinable all the days that I was in Delhi. I have always feared Delhi. A city of savvy shopkeepers and astute politicians, its size, its belligerent commerce, its survival-of-the-pushiest code and one’s own anonymity there, had made me shrink away from staying there beyond a few days. Coming from Paris, my eyes searched for beauty, craved for it.

A few days after we returned to Hyderabad, I had to go to the Shringeri Math, not far from our place, for my father-in-law’s masikam, the monthly shraadh ceremony. I was unfamiliar with the

2 Beyond the Gopurams

nature of this ceremony. I felt comfortable and secure going to the Shringeri Math the first time because my sister-in-law and her husband were with me, while Ravi participated in the ceremony in the large rectangular room with four others, who were also performing it for one of their elders. After this, in the coming months, for the most part, I attended the masikam alone, with the exception of Ravi who was involved in this monthly ritual. On three occasions, my son Ananda was with me until he left for Montreal in December 2006. I used to be unsure of myself because, while I understand Telugu, I do not speak it fluently. This would make me vulnerable to the queries and looks of other people (the relatives of the deceased) who waited in the room with me while the ceremony was being performed. The whole thing would take around three hours, during which time I would sit along with the others in a different room before we were called for the ritual lunch.

To get to the Shringeri Math, one has to go through crowded bazaars and two railway crossings. Fortunately the Math is at the end of a quiet dead end street. A very functional place with no pretence to beauty, the Math’s ordinariness is nevertheless redeemed by the trees, potted plants, flowering bushes and flowers within its walls.

I recall one particular day in October. The first flowers that greeted me were the mellow orange kanakambaram in a planter and the deep radiant-red and sunset-red ixora bushes. I took these colours with me inside when I sat for three long hours in the nondescript waiting room meant for relatives of the person participating in the masikam. We sat on patterned plastic floor mats, which have replaced the chatais and chapas of our childhood. It was my third visit here. Both Ananda and I were equipped with books. I hesitated to read for the first few minutes because I did not know

I Am Home 3

what was appropriate in such a place and on such an occasion. I silently chanted the few shlokas of the Vinayaka stuti that I knew and repeated Sri Rama Rama Rameti, Rame Rame Manorame…several times. The others in the room were chatting in low voices about mundane and sticky domestic matters, health and family problems. The women had Telugu magazines that they flicked through desultorily. One older woman, who was very likely in her sagging sixties, yawned, rested her head on her elbow and stretched out on the floor mat. This was at eleven in the morning. The women stole glances at me and Ananda, trying to place us, figure us out. I was in a salwar kameez, which is not the norm in such a place. Although the fabric was South cotton, Mangalgiri cotton to be precise, and I was wearing a big bindi and a mangalsutra, their curious, stolen glances told me that they were puzzled. My demeanour also did not encourage them to break the ice and venture into a conversation with me. Perhaps, I looked distant, reticent and inclined to remain silent. I looked around and took in my surroundings. The grey stone floor was oily, sticky, pitted, chipped and discoloured in places. A brownish-black uneven band ran across the centre of the floor. Two water drainage holes in the floor were blocked with cylindrical pieces of wood to prevent insects and rats from crawling in. The windows did not have wooden panes or frames because good quality teak is an expensive proposition. The translucent glass of the windowpanes was bordered by an iron frame, painted black. The window ledge had a spiderweb that moved in the breeze. The bluishgrey doors were speckled with dirty brown, dried water stains. The grey-blue wall of the room had become drab with time. It had darker bands and patches where the heads and backs of the people sitting on mats brushed it. The light and fan switches were grimy. The switchboard was greasy and dirty. The ceiling fan

4 Beyond the Gopurams

above us moved in a slow, desultory fashion. No amount of fiddling with the regulator could goad it to rotate faster.

I watched three ants explore the floor, each focussing on a separate stone slab as its demarcated domain. From the kitchen came different sounds: The stony roll of the wet grinder, the sprightly whistle of the pressure cooker, the clank of pots and pans and the banging of ladles against the sides of pots. In between was the erratic sound of someone slapping clothes against a stone or floor to wash them or beat the dirt out of them. A train rumbled closer and then clanged past, not far from the Math. All these sounds mingled with the sonorous chanting from the next room. The mixed aroma of incense, ghee and vadas drifted in and uplifted me. Everything was so familiar, yet it came as a surprising discovery after years of long absence from India. When we returned here irregularly, approximately once in a year and a half, I would re-experience the familiar sights and sounds, but more as a detached observer. Earlier, they had not penetrated my awareness as sharply as they did now. I guess it was because I was reacquainting myself with everything that I had left behind. After my return, some things jarred, others shocked, some things surprised and a few others came as a reassurance, tender, heartwarming or steadfast.

The grey-white boundary wall of the house was suffocatingly close to the window. The dhatura plant raised its noxious head above the wall. Not far behind was a tall, prosperous mango tree with dense abundant leaves. It seemed to dwarf the other trees in front of it. Small portions of the sky were visible like uneven paper cut-outs, shaped by a child’s fanciful hand.

I started reading and making notes. I could feel the occasional glance of a slender, balding middle-aged man on me. He had been narrating the history of his afflictions and I caught scraps

I Am Home 5

of that narrative. I looked up from the book and met his eye. He addressed me abruptly in English, which sounded so much like Telugu because of the accent and the way he intoned his sentences. ‘Excuse me to disturb you. You read. You make notes. Are you a teacher?’ ‘No,’ I replied softly. ‘You research?’ ‘No. I am reading for pleasure.’ I waited. ‘Are you Telugu?’ I shook my head slowly. He waited. ‘I am from the north,’ I explained reluctantly, with some measure of defiance and a hint of displeasure in my voice. I did not explain any further. He was decidedly curious. The others in the room were all ears. ‘Are you a Gujarati?’ he wished to know. ‘I am not,’ I replied brusquely. He wouldn’t give up. ‘Are you from UP or Punjab?’ ‘I am from both, but more so from Hyderabad. My parents have lived here since 1976. This is home,’ I explained. I did not wish to satisfy his curiosity any further and turned away to read when he said, ‘North or south…you are a human being.’ I was aghast at his flimsy charity camouflaged as a Eureka moment, but soon realised that he meant no offence. It was an involuntary and harmless statement, though thoughtless, which posed as tolerance in his mind.

After coming back to India, I was increasingly becoming aware of how much the specifics of one’s origins mattered here. This was unlike life abroad, where one was part of the disparate and amorphous corps diplomatique, or the NRIs, who are a curious blend of financial success with its assertion of a new identity, nostalgia, a harking back to roots and the need to project a unified face of India, which reflects both its diversity and divisiveness. Living in India, outside of the cosmopolitan veneer of the big city élite, was to become acutely aware of, and be reminded of, the precise details of one’s identity—region, religion, language and caste. This presented the challenge of learning to

6 Beyond the Gopurams

locate oneself in, and assimilate into, a particular community. Once again, I had to come to terms with this reality.

The life of Ramana Maharishi kept me company that day and contained my irritation.

Each masikam, I would take my reading and my cross-stitch embroidery to the Math. The embroidery and the pattern book—titled in French—would awaken the curiosity of the women sitting in the room with me and they would ask me to show the book and what I was doing. My hesitant and uncertain Telugu invariably gave me away. They would wonder where I was from and ask questions about my marriage to Ravi. I did not flinch. I learnt to accept their curiosity, take it in my stride and respond with quiet dignity. On one occasion, one of them conceded generously, ‘It doesn’t matter where you are from. You are an Indian.’ There was no hidden barb there. They did not know how to tread carefully in personal areas and I smiled and continued to read.

Each masikam and shraadh that I attended at the Shringeri Math, the ritual prasadam lunch would be served around one. The first two or three masikams, when I sat down with the others to eat, I was self-conscious and shy. A slow eater, I would struggle with pappu annam (dal and rice) while others would’ve adeptly moved on to second and third servings or charu annam (rasam and rice). We would sit on long mats on the floor and eat out of large, flimsy paper plates covered with a thin sheet of aluminium. Invariably, this was the shraadh menu—a fiery-sweet ginger chutney, searingly spicy roasted sesame powder, boiled, skinned green gram dal, a sweet-sour, spicy bitter gourd or yam or raw banana preparation, a tongue-chafing bendakaya (okra) or dondakaya (gherkins) preparation with cumin and red chilli powder, an under-sweet watery payasam, crisp, oily vadas, a rasam that I never tasted and sour buttermilk. And, of course, a mound of rice with two drops

I Am Home 7

of ghee that I always wished I could give away to a hungry mouth. The meal would conclude with a loud satisfied belch from the priest, who was always, for some reason, indulgent and gentle towards me and sterner towards the others. And each time as we would step into the backyard and await our turn to wash our hands at the long rectangular trough-like cement sink, I would gaze longingly at the bilva tree with its hard woody fruit and dark trifoliate leaves and wonder if I could get at least one fruit to take home. I never asked because something told me that the leaves and the fruit would only be used for pujas and religious ceremonies. I had last tasted the fruit as a child, had enjoyed the sherbet made from the pale-peach, fibrous flesh of the fruit and knew of the medicinal value of the bilva root, leaves and fruit.

I went to the Shringeri Math once a month for the first year of our stay in Hyderabad and three or four times a year during the next five years. With the passage of time, I was less bothered by the people’s unabashed curiosity and interest in me as an outsider. I learnt to relax and accept all my experiences there as an integral and inevitable part of my homecoming. ‘I am home’ gradually began to mean something positive and promising for me. It gave me a chance to travel in my country, primarily to the different temple towns in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. As I experienced each of these places, my homecoming resonated with meanings I had never dreamt of discovering. It enriched my stay in India in ways I had never even remotely contemplated. What follows is a narration of those journeys, without and within.

8 Beyond the Gopurams

Monkey Business and

Mahabalipuram

hennai is home for Ravi, an indelible part of his memories—his years of childhood and youth with their turmoil and joys, his childhood friends, his college mates; Mylapore and Triplicane, the beach, the Kapaleeshwar temple, the British era structures, some still surviving doggedly, some razed to the ground; Carnatic music and the various sabhas. A nostalgic connection with all its dicey pitfalls and its cosy reassurances. And after so many years of marriage I was going to discover the many dimensions of his home. I was in Chennai with Ravi for the music season, full of anticipation and some trepidation because I would be attending the music festival at the august Music Academy for the first time.

A pleasurable and heartwarming aspect of this visit to Chennai was an opportunity to reconnect with Chitra and Alex, our friends from Paris. Chitra was visiting her parents in Chennai. It was a trying time for her as her father was ailing. Keen on giving her parents an outing as the year drew to a worrisome close for her, all of us decided to go to Mahabalipuram.

After seeing the shore temple, we were going to see the old lighthouse which is around a thousand years old. Chitra’s parents decided to sit on a stone bench in the open, tree-filled, shady area at the base of the cave temple as her father would find it very strenuous to make the climb. The afternoon sun added to his fatigue and unease. We walked up the sloping path that led to the Mahishasuramardini Mandapam, which is a temple created out of a huge rock. It is supported by cylindrical pillars that have no carvings on them. At this rock-cut temple we saw Mahishasuramardini in bas-relief on the wall to our right. The goddess Durga here is full of divine fury and fiery energy as she kills Mahishasura, the buffalo-headed demon. In stark contrast, on the long panel opposite, is Lord Vishnu as Anantshayana. He is reclining peacefully on Adisesha. He is in an impressive state of repose on the massive coils of his serpent bed. As we face Lord Vishnu, to his right, very near his feet, is a standing figure in a belligerent posture. He has a weapon in his lowered right hand which is positioned across the body and touches his upper left thigh. His look is full of defiance and arrogant power. He is looking sideways and his chin is parallel to his right shoulder. He looks ready to assault someone or protect Lord Vishnu. Another figure behind him, who is looking over his shoulder, places a restraining hand on his arm (at least that’s how it seemed to me). Both these men have tall, elaborate headdresses. I would have loved to know the story of this tableau—roused energy and restful sleep were juxtaposed here.

We walked up the steps to the old lighthouse which itself is a temple called the Ishvara Temple. There were a few monkeys around and Ravi had warned me to be careful and not do anything to attract their attention. The old lighthouse has a metal railing running around it for the safety of visitors. We had just turned the corner and were near the virile lion figure at one of the corner

10 Beyond the Gopurams

pillars when I noticed a monkey on the rock below. While seated it was bending forward to lick a small patch of wetness there. I thought to myself, ‘Poor thing, it is thirsty.’ I had barely turned away from it when there was a sudden movement near us and in one swift, deft and unaggressive move the monkey took the water bottle that was in Ravi’s left hand. We watched the monkey now, curious as to what it would do with it. It sat down on the rock below and then effortlessly and quickly unscrewed the lid of the bottle, as if it had been doing this all its life. I thought it would raise the bottle to its mouth and drink water just as we do, because it had looked so human earlier. Instead, it spilt the water on the rock surface, flung the bottle away and bent forward to lap up the water quickly to slake its thirst.

I said to Ravi, ‘Poor thing, it must have been very thirsty. Did it scratch or hurt you when it took the bottle?’

‘No, I just felt a mild tug. Basically I was taken unawares.’ Ravi became extra cautious afterwards and began worrying about his expensive sunglasses. The monkey might just show evidence of another form of human behaviour—take the sunglasses to shield its eyes from the sun, was his argument.

I laughed, ‘How will a leaping monkey keep the sunglasses on?’

‘That’s not my problem. I just don’t want it being attracted by my sunglasses.’

‘Very far-fetched!’ I said, amused.

This monkey episode reminded me of my childhood visits to the town of Dibai in Uttar Pradesh. It happens to be my birthplace. It used to be a village then—a village filled with monkeys (raided by monkeys, I would say). It had far too many of them for my comfort. I must have been very young, a little over two, I think. I am not very sure how old I was then. On a winter afternoon, I

Monkey Business and Mahabalipuram 11

was sitting on a charpoy in the courtyard of my dadiji’s home. My mother and dadiji were with me. The kitchen was set apart from the rest of the house and was at the other end of the open-to-sky aangan or central courtyard, right across from the rooms. Fearfully, I had been watching a monkey sitting on the boundary wall that we shared with the neighbour’s house. I pestered my mother to go inside the house with me. I had a positive horror of monkeys and she felt, I understand now, that if I got used to seeing them around me, I would overcome my fear of them. She asked me to sit closer to her and dadiji said, ‘Why are you afraid when I am here with you?’ My mother told me years later that I replied, ‘Because you can’t jump like the monkeys.’ Within minutes, the monkey that had been biding its time on the wall jumped down, picked up one of my mother’s Bata rubber slippers. I shrieked and hid my face against my mother. The detestable creature climbed the wall, sat there chewing the slipper and then hurled the disfigured thing onto the ground. I can still recall my fear and disgust at the sight of the unsightly slipper.

The toilets were not in the house but across the street in a row. I used to be so terrified of the monkeys that I had to go through a major brainwashing by my mother and a lot of coaxing before I felt comfortable stepping out. I had to be reassured a million times that there was no monkey prowling about and my mother had to stand guard at the door and keep calming my fears.

Strangely enough, I am not afraid of them at all now. And I was not afraid of the monkeys of Mahabalipuram.

12 Beyond the Gopurams

Chidambaram

s part of this trip to Chennai, Ravi had planned a visit to a few temples in the Thanjavur region and around. The first of our journeys began with the start of the new year—January 2007.

From our guest house at Ashok Nagar in Chennai, we drove to our friend Chandra’s house. We had known him since our posting in Damascus, where we’d first met him. He was going to go with us on our visits to temples. In fact Chandra became our unproclaimed, steadfast guide and narrator of stories and anecdotes on this trip. I was ignorant of the significance of the temples we were going to visit and the sthalapuranas associated with each of them, and he was an inexhaustible library of information. Above all, he was patient, very patient with me. I troubled him with endless questions, sometimes about the most obvious and simplest of things and he replied very calmly and conscientiously as if he were explaining something to a curious child. I was amused at times because I did already know the meaning of some of the Sanskrit terms he used, but I guess my persistent questions gave him the impression that I was totally unaware of most things to do with temples, their history and significance. However, it was also true that what was common knowledge for someone who belonged to this region and

was raised on stories and legends associated with the temples, was a discovery, a beautiful revelation for me.

We drove from Chennai to Chidambaram in Chandra’s friend’s car. On the outskirts of Chidambaram, we crossed a canal filled with water hyacinth—neelambala. A bund with thorny bushes skirted one side of the canal and wild plants and weeds with long, tangled arms barged into the water insidiously, choking the canal. Quite a disagreeable sight! As we neared the main street, the pleasurable smell of ghee and sambhrani filled the air and greeted us with an auspicious welcome. We got off the car and saw the main temple chariot and learnt that the temple chariot procession had been delayed by more than a couple of hours. We were grateful for this delay because we would now see the ratham being pulled. There were people and people everywhere. The whole atmosphere was festive, colourful and charged with devotion. Most of the women looked fresh and lovely in their richly coloured Kanjeevarams or bold floral synthetic saris. They had taken great care to adorn their hair with jasmine and kanakambaram or jasmine and pink arali flowers. The more traditional Brahmin women were in their madisars. Women, young boys and girls vied with each other in decorating the road with kolam. With small plastic bags in their hands, they bent down to draw simple or elaborate and exquisite kolam designs on the road. They were oblivious of everything but their own desire to adorn the path where the lord’s chariot would pass. I think the street must have been sprinkled with water beforehand to allow the kolam patterns to adhere. It was a brisk, smiling business day for the vendors. A young boy was selling flutes and an old man staggered forward with his multicoloured burden of paper